Article excerpt

AFTER months under the constant eye of security police,
outspoken journalist Zhang Weiguo said last week that he is being
allowed to leave China for the United States.

Mr. Zhang, former Beijing correspondent of the banned World
Economic Herald of Shanghai, told the Monitor in a telephone
interview that he has been invited to be a research fellow at the
University of California at Berkeley. He plans to focus on human
rights and development of news media in China since economic
reforms were launched in 1978.

Although he expects to receive his passport by Dec. 25, Zhang
said he will postpone departure until January for health reasons.
He intends to return to China.

"Being allowed to go overseas should not be taken as a major
sign of improvement in China's human rights record. Much more
attention should be given to human rights issues as a whole," Zhang
said from his Shanghai home. "China is changing, and the study of
human rights in China is in its beginning stage. A lot of work has
to be done."

Zhang's departure comes as China continues to try to mute
condemnation of its human rights record following the June 4, 1989,
massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing. In 1991, China
pledged to then-Secretary of State James Baker III that it would
grant exit visas to citizens not facing legal charges.

In August, China gave a passport to labor activist Han Dongfang,
allowing him to seek medical treatment in the US.

And last month, Bao Zunxin, a former scholar at the China
Academy for Social Sciences, was released on probation 19 months
before the end of a five-year term imposed for his involvement in
the Beijing demonstrations.

Yet while Beijing frees or expels some troublesome dissidents,
the Communist dictatorship is not lifting its lid on political
expression, Western and Chinese observers say.

In recent weeks, Chinese secret police have detained several
dissidents linked to the return this year of pro-democracy activist
Shen Tong. Mr. Shen, who fled to the US after the brutal crackdown
on demonstrators in Beijing, came back to China in July, was
arrested in September, and expelled to the US in October.

Activists say that Chinese police, in arresting Shen, may have
captured detailed records of China's dissident network. Several
activists who met Shen have since been detained, including An Ning,
an archaeology graduate of Beijing University, and Meng Zhongwei, a
former student at Zhengzhou University.

Recently, Li Honglin, a prominent advocate of political and
economic reform and a scholar at the Fujian Academy of Social
Sciences, was denied permission to leave China to lecture at
several American universities. …